Thursday, 23 June 2016

How to volunteer for un and sdgs

There are various ways of volunteering that enables to take and give to the society. An idea that can help volunteers to achieve UN SDGs.

A model of volunteering:

Volunteers are living in society. Volunteers can interact within their locality on issues that they are interested in. Volunteers can easily talk to their neighbours to get their views on their topic. The volunteers may find that some of them may be experienced in that particular field and some of them may also be specialist in that field. They can also look around their locality and may find officials working in their interest area. This volunteering model can be easily implemented by all and may give useful answers to many questions on how to meet UN SDGs. This is simply a talk/interview method that can be used by volunteers. The interview of those persons can be put in Google blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc by the volunteers that will contain the views of those people who were interviewed or were talked with and also the volunteer views or that can be sent to United Nations organizations like United Nations Volunteers (UNV) and other volunteer organizations or Government organizations working for volunteers and UN SDGs. That is it is documenting the interviews at a place and it could be even social media that give free service which can be utilized by the volunteers to let people/organizations working on UN SDGs know about the outcome of their talk/interviews. This interview model by volunteers to meet UN SDGs will bring practical response to achieve UN SDGs. This may not put pressure on the volunteers. Volunteers can interview people in their own locality and also in their neighbourhood and people employed in senior positions. There will be lot of knowledge exchange and it will be a basis to form new initiatives to reach or meet UN SDGs.

For example, a volunteer interested in entrepreneurship/business/trading can look in their locality/colony for people involved in a business/trading or a factory owner, and the volunteer can easily approach them, talk to them or take their interviews which will give their practical views, from their experiences and can also take the interview of bankers nearby their areas to get the officials views. This may not cost extra money to the volunteers as they can meet the officials in their banks where they have kept their accounts so that one fine day when the volunteer goes to bank for his/her own work, he/she can take out some time to meet the officials to know more about what is needed to achieve UN SDG Goal 9 and also meet many other banks nearby to get more clearer picture. The volunteer can also meet many traders in their locality or when they visit the mall for purchase their items/products to understand the environment of business for example and etc in what they are interested in to find out.

Another example is in a daily vegetable market. After interviewing the vegetable vendors nearby on NULM Scheme, it was found that according to one of them she is a urban poor and can show Below Poverty Line (BPL) Card for the NULM Scheme but she was not aware of this programme that is the Self Employment Programme (SEP) component of NULM which is for the urban poor and who can show BPL Card but as she knows about the scheme now may approach the concerned officer to know more about it and if possible will undertake the free training.

On the train, talking to people, interacting with them on your subject of volunteering may also lead to many useful information. For example meeting an expert on irrigation in the train, it was found that according to him, irrigation facility has to be improved to meet the UN SDG goal to double the agriculture production. There are experts all around us and without making more extra efforts one can gain useful information.

Small small interviews/talks taken by volunteers from all over the world if it can be documented to reach people, volunteer organizations, United Nations organizations, Government organizations and if this kind of volunteering be encouraged by the government and there can be a volunteer cell in every district then there is a possibility of gathering lot of useful information, and there will be exchange of knowledge to achieve UN SDGs. So this kind of model of talking/interviewing and documenting it by not doing something more extra that is deviating from one's way can also bring knowledge of what is happening and what requires to be done to achieve UN SDGs.